


Cold Contracts

by Morbane



Category: Not If I Save You First - Ally Carter
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Constructive Criticism Welcome, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 23:47:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20266522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: Conditions change quickly in the wilderness - and as events unfold, Stefan starts to look less like an enemy and more like something else.





	Cold Contracts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nerissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/gifts).

Their kidnapper's eyes were locked with those of the forest ranger who had stumbled across them.

"Do you know what you're doing?" the ranger asked.

"Yes," Stefan said, "I do," and as he spoke, several things happened at once.

Logan saw Maddie, with the briefest of sideways looks, step between Stefan and the ranger. She was trying to keep Stefan from getting a clear sight on the ranger - and trying to keep the ranger from seeing Stefan. Trying to keep him from seeing as Stefan brought his hands up, holding his gun. It was as though her movements and Stefan's were part of some mechanism operated by the same lever.

Whatever invisible string connected them both, the ranger wasn't part of it. The ranger reached into his coat and brought out a gun - a different gun to the one that had drawn Logan's attention, holstered at his side. Maddie's expression turned disbelieving. She took one step to her right. The ranger's gun swung with her, muzzle trained on her. Then the ranger saw Stefan's stance, and shifted his balance, swinging the gun back. He shot to Maddie's side and over her shoulder. He was shooting at Stefan.

For a moment, Logan felt giddy relief. Then Maddy hit the snowy ground, having turned her side-step into a dive, and Stefan shot back. Two shots. Three.

The ranger staggered, and fell.

"No!" Maddie yelled, crawling towards the ranger. She pulled at his jacket, at the holes in it where blood appeared, and spread. "No."

"Yes," Stefan said. Logan looked back at him. Stefan slowly lowered the gun, and transferred it to his other hand as if it hurt him. With his right hand, he reached up and felt at his shoulder. 

Logan realised: Stefan had been shot.

Then Stefan caught Logan's eyes, and shook off whatever trance had taken hold of him while he was coming to the same realisation.

"You. Girl."

"You know my name," Maddie said, not looking around.

"Yes. Maddie. Maddie who is the one I will shoot next. You should pay attention."

She got to her knees, glaring at him. "I can't do anything for him anyway." Despite her words, her hand fluttered across the ranger's face, closing his eyes.

"No." Stefan almost smiled. "You shouldn't feel bad. He wasn't going to help you." He pointed.

Logan stepped towards her, and then he saw it too - the tattoo showing at the edge of the man's cuff, exposed as Maddie pushed it back, a wolf in the grip of a two-headed bird.

"Who was he?" Maddie asked, her voice smaller than Logan had ever heard it before.

Stefan shook his head dismissively. "You don't need to know." He transferred the gun back to his right hand. Pointing it at her, he ordered, "President's Son. Tie her wrists to your handcuffs. _Do it now_."

* * *

When they were tied together, he made them lie down on the snow, propping themselves up awkwardly with their hands, and then he went thirty yards away, uphill, and took his first aid supplies out of his pack. They watched while slowly, painstakingly, he packed his shoulder wound and bound it with dark fabric, and even more slowly eased his arm back into his jacket, and then while, slower yet, he dressed his calf, where the first bullet of the "ranger" must have grazed him. Despite his stiff movements, every time Logan raised his head above his hands, Stefan yelled at him, and his hand moved towards his gun.

"You got lucky," Logan muttered.

Maddie didn't take her eyes off Stefan as she replied. "I did. He could have shot the other man through me. He didn't."

The snow was soaking through Logan's jeans, and the flare gun Maddie had slipped out of the "ranger"'s holster was an awkward lump in the small of his back. But there were advantages to their position. At least they could talk freely.

"Like I said before, I think I know where he's taking us next," Maddie said quietly. "There's an old bridge up ahead. Almost derelict. And it looks almost as dangerous as it is." She grinned. "I might have made it a little more dangerous."

"You want us to try to get the jump on him there?"

"I _did_. There's a bear trap buried in the ground in front of the bridge. And I left a knife on the other side. But now I'm not sure he'll make it that far. So we need a backup plan."

It gave him a prickling, heady feeling to talk about needing a plan for _if_ Stefan collapsed. Logan tried to remember what else he'd seen on the map, earlier. He was pretty sure he remembered the river that Maddie's bridge must cross. That made it easier.

"There was a dot on the map on this side of the river. Nearly due north of here, I think. I think it could have been a cabin."

Maddie just nodded, as though Logan having snuck a peek at Stefan's map was something she took for granted. "We can try to veer north. It isn't hard to get off-track in these conditions. We can slow him down so that it's dark before we get to the bridge. Especially if he leaves us tied together." She gave him a warning look. "We can't unlock your handcuffs until we're in a position to get the gun off him. He has to underestimate us until then."

Logan had to suppress a jolt of disappointment. Trust Maddie to talk so casually about the fact that they would need to spend the next part of their trek basically holding hands.

* * *

When Stefan came back to them, Maddie smiled up at him. "You must be pretty tough. I could have patched you up faster, though."

Stefan merely grunted and gestured for them to stand up. "Hurry. We have time to make up." 

"Right away, Mr Kidnapper Man," Maddie chirped. 

And for the first half-mile, she was as good as her word.

Maddie could feel Stefan's frustration as they stumbled through the forest. It beat against their backs, almost as tangible as heat. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place: while he was alert, and while they were tied, his captives had little chance of overpowering him. But keeping the upper hand cost him. With their hands bound together, Maddie and Logan were making glacial progress to where Stefan needed them to be.

But, after the first hour, the sense of impatience faded. Stefan wasn't hot on their heels any more. And more importantly, he'd stopped barking out corrections every time Maddie started to pull them off-course. 

It was getting darker and darker, faster and faster. It felt like it had been getting darker for weeks instead of hours - maybe actually _years_ \- but it wasn't until they struggled out of a patch of forest and saw how the distant horizon blended into the sky that Maddie had real confirmation of what her time sense had been telling her. 

Stefan was no longer chivvying him on. Rather, they were leading him.

"It's time," Maddie whispered to Logan. They had to stop, Maddie bending with Logan, so that he could reach his pocket. "When I give the signal, go for his gun."

The bad part: it took nearly a minute for him to get the key into position. 

The good part: it wasn't until he'd managed it that Stefan called out to order them onwards.

The part she wasn't telling him: her 'signal' was going to be her moving first.

She trusted Logan in some things, and especially, she trusted him because she had to, but she didn't trust him to go along with a plan that risked _her_. Which was why she was the brains of the operation.

Stefan yelled at them a second time. "We do not stop."

"We're just catching our breaths!" Maddie called back. She tried to sound exhausted, but wasn't sure how well she managed it. She was tired, of course, but sounding perky even under the worst of circumstances - especially under the worst of circumstances - was a habit that was hard to break in one day. Under cover of her words, Logan unlocked the handcuffs.

Maddie leaned into Logan, turning half-around so that she could look back at Stefan over Logan's shoulder. 

"You're the one who knows where we're going," she pointed out. "You should lead. It's not like I can sneak off on my own. And even I know that shelter with you is better than no shelter and no you."

"You are right," Stefan said, his words sounding promisingly labored. "But you are too late. Move. If you cannot walk I will cut you loose and leave you."

He was almost within range.

Maddie tensed, waiting her moment. Then she shoved Logan aside and barrelled towards Stefan. She lifted her hands, clenched into fists, and shoved them at Stefan's injured shoulder like a club. Between the blow and her forward momentum, they went down together.

She wasn't going to admit to herself that she'd earned her old nickname there. It had been a gamble, but a calculated one. For a second time, Stefan had hesitated to shoot Maddie, at risk to himself.

"Logan!" Maddie screamed, as Stefan writhed beneath her and then rolled, pinning her under him. His eyes glinted in the darkness, his mouth parted in a gleaming snarl. 

_Use all of your brain for once. Don't pull him off me. Get the GUN!_

And then she heard the most welcome sound she'd heard all day.

A grunt, and then the sound of a safety clicking, well above her head.

"Get off her." Logan sounded a little bit breathless. 

Stefan's mouth closed. His eyes closed briefly. When they opened again Maddie couldn't read them. It was the darkness, of course.

Maddie smiled.

"Phase one complete," she said, sunny enough for an Alaskan midsummer day.

The first thing they made Stefan do was untie Maddie's hands, and then they used the rope to tie Stefan's own hands. Behind his back.

Despite the way he breathed as they moved his left arm - and despite the fact that Maddie was _absolutely_ not going easy on him because of that pain - he still closed his fingers briefly around hers as she worked. "You have managed this, yes. But you are a fool if you think you have won."

"Stop," Logan said.

"You cannot make me, can you, Logan? Even now."

"All done," Maddie said brightly, even as she was tucking one of the rope ends safely away from Stefan's grasp. "Phone time."

The dim glow of the screen as Maddie thumbed it on was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. Prettier than her own fully-bedazzled face in a mirror. Hotter than new!Logan. 

The intermittent flash of the dying battery was the ugliest and worst.

"There's a charger," Logan said. He held it out.

"A solar charger," Maddie corrected him dully. 

Well. That was fine. Just a minor setback, really. They just had to wait until daylight. 

And there was plenty to do before then.

* * *

They had barely more light than the battery with which to check Stefan's map. But to Maddie's relief, the cabin Logan had mentioned was a lot closer than she'd feared.

Which was good, because for the next part of the walk, they had to support Stefan between them.

She honestly didn't think he was trying to make it hard. It was more as if with their victory, some desperate force had gone out of him, and whatever determination had enabled him to march on with a wounded calf and shoulder had been used up. He didn't struggle. He didn't shove Logan off when Logan first linked his left arm with Stefan's right. He treated Maddie's hand, placed on his left hip to steady him, as if it wasn't there. 

Maddie could feel him shaking, with exhaustion or maybe with cold. That was okay. She wasn't going to worry until the shaking stopped.

Whether they actually found the cabin was a much bigger worry. It wasn't as though this part of Alaska had an overabundance of signposts, and they'd walked a good way away from the point that Logan had thought was due south of the cabin. The edge of the thicker part of the forest was a good guideline - if it was the edge of the right part of the forest.

So she talked, to keep herself from hearing her own thoughts.

And also to make sure the bears could hear them coming.

But Stefan, for all her hints and questions, barely responded. 

Before long, she gave up the hope of getting answers from him. It was all they could do to keep him moving.

* * *

Even Maddie couldn't have told how long they'd been walking when Logan pointed ahead of them at a shape that was darker and squarer than the trees.

"We made it."

"Of course we did," Maddie said. "Phase Two complete."

The cabin wasn't too badly supplied. Somewhere out there, the cabin's owner was owed a debt of gratitude. Maddie just hoped she got to deliver her thanks in person some day. There was a good stack of chopped wood, and even some canned food. There were blankets, and bandages.

No matches, but the impressed look on Logan's face when Maddie started a fire without them made that worth it.

They got food into Stefan as best they could, and Logan took him outside for both of them to take care of toilet needs. Then they set about making as cosy a nest as they could. They also used the extra rope in Stefan's pack to tie him to the pipe of the little wood stove.

"Do you really think I'm going anywhere?"

"I don't know," Maddie said. "Would you, if you could?"

He snorted. "Without the President's Son, it does not matter where I go."

"And why is that?" Maddie asked him. "We're going to find out anyway. Tomorrow, we call my dad. We call a lot of people. Maybe there was no one coming to help us before, but that was then. You have to know they're coming now."

"Your father will not come."

She couldn't help it - her head jerked up and she stared at him. There was something so inexorable and flat about Stefan's tone that it went straight to her core. She couldn't disbelieve it.

"Of course you'd say that," Logan said, and she suddenly wanted to hit him. Even more than she'd wanted to burn him up on the spot with the kind of glare that someone earned when they'd spent six years not replying to letters.

"The man who wants Logan," Stefan said evenly, "wants Christopher Manchester just as much. Because of who he is and what he did. And he wanted me to get Logan for him, for similar reasons."

Maddie didn't understand, yet, and yet she did. "But not me?" she asked, making a logical jump to _why_ Logan and her dad were connected. Logic was better than letting it sink in: her dad wasn't going to save her from their enemies, because their enemies _had_ him.

Stefan shook his head.

"He didn't know you were alive," he said. 

He added, "Uri would have told him."

"The "ranger"?"

"Yes."

"Is my dad alive?" Maddie asked.

"Probably," Stefan said. "He will wait until I bring him Logan. Then..." He shrugged. A shrug, Maddie would have said, was an open, ambiguous sort of gesture. But this was a very final shrug.

"Why did you help him?" Logan said.

Maddie had almost forgotten Logan was there.

Stefan shrugged. "He has my sister."

Logan scoffed. "I don't believe that."

Another one-shoulder shrug, Stefan's injured shoulder held still and the other shifting. "It does not matter what you believe."

Maddie believed him.

"What will happen if you don't bring Logan to this man? Your sister dies?"

"Yes," Stefan said. "If she is not already dead. She is ill. I was running out of time."

Maddie had one last question. The most important one.

"Where your sister is, is my dad there?"

"Yes."

The problem with getting privacy for a discussion was that the storm was even worse outside than it had been before nightfall, and the cabin had only one room.

Logan obviously cared, but Maddie didn't, really. The way she saw it, they had exactly one plan.

"Tomorrow, when the phone has enough charge, you go through numbers until you get _someone_ who can rescue you. You stay here. Stefan and I go."

"I can't just let you head _towards_ this guy who wants us all dead, in _his_ company!" Logan pointed angrily at Stefan, who snorted.

"Yes, you can," Maddie said firmly. "You're the one he wants most, so you're a card up our sleeve. If you come with us, we lose that advantage. Logan, we have to. This is the only way to save my dad. I saved _you_. You need to stay saved."

Logan stared at her. "This isn't some kind of logic problem like the fox and the goose and the grain," he said angrily. "We do this together or not at all."

"Then we don't," Maddie said simply. "And my dad dies. And Stefan's sister."

She turned away from him. "And you're the grain, obviously," she added. "The thing everyone wants eventually. _I'm_ the goose. The big scary bird the Romans used like guard dogs. Who can take care of herself."

"Maddie," he said. He didn't sound determined anymore, just hurt. "I don't want to lose you again."

She whipped back to him. "You should have thought of that before you decided not to answer six years' worth of letters," she said.

She hadn't meant to let her face get so close to his, to his stricken expression. To his actually very kissable lips, which parted on the words, "You're right."

She recoiled.

She hadn't actually realised how much the truth would _hurt_.

Even the mind of the smartest girl for fifty miles around in any direction went blank sometimes. That was the only explanation for why she went straight from an irrelevant, intrusive thought about kissing Logan to turning her head and, instead, kissing Stefan.

Not much of a kiss. Not on his lips, on his cheek. But enough.

Just to show Logan what he could have had, if he hadn't been a lying, lousy, letter-neglecting loser.

"We're going to finish this tomorrow," she told Logan. "Stefan and me. And if you _ever_ were my friend, stay out of it."

She pretended she didn't hear his under-breath reply of, "_Because_ I'm your friend, I can't."

If he couldn't, she'd have to find a way to make him.

**Author's Note:**

> ... and then events continue somewhat like canon but with more sexual tension and with an even more effective, since less injured, Maddie.
> 
> I handwaved a bit with geography and Stefan’s pack, but he’s using the spare socks to help dress his injuries.
> 
> (Working title: Not If He Shoots Him First.)
> 
> Nerissa, I hope you enjoyed this!


End file.
